Apparently various offshoots of the Free Software Foundation including Defective by Design are orchestrating unusual and creative protests against DRM claiming that DRM will provide a toehold for worldwide fascism, or something like that. Whatever the case you have to admire the fact that they all went out and bought hazmat suits for their protest march.

Again, for some reason, the Pacific Northwest is the nexus for a new trend.

We dressed up in HAZMAT suits and handed out fliers outside of Bill Gates’ keynote speech at WinHEC 2006 in Seattle.

It is my opinion that Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Treacherous Computing (aka Trusted Computing/TC) are the number one threats to free and open source desktop operating systems such as GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and more.

I would be remiss if I let the large industry players (Microsoft, Apple, Real, Intel, etc.) force this technology on an unsuspecting public without attempting to inform them of what they are giving up in return for a magical world of DRM convenience.

Since there is media out there prottected by DRM, and future media that will be protected by DRM. Why would anyone want an OS that was unable to haddle that media? Protesting MSFT in regards to DRM is rediculus. Vista does not force anyone to use DRM music, movies… but allows people who have media that is DRMed to death to be able to access it.
If I poped in a disc someday and MSFT Windows said “We are sorry but the media you have inserted is prottected by DRM. As people protested us wearing hazmats suits we decided you did not want the ability to access the data on this media.” I would be upset, the same with if I did it with MAC OS.
If they are anti DRm they should go protest the companies who want to use DRM to protect their IP… Not the people who make an os that allows you to access it.
Now if MSFT or Apple made an OS that only allowed you to use DRMed stuff, it would be another story.

OK, it might just be the humidity but when I read:If I poped in a disc someday…
I got this vision of XVI in his miter with an enormous disc descending from above: New in 2005! The first slot-loading pope! (Now, now, people, keep it clean.)

Security (DRM included) is inversely proportional to TRUST. The more security that creeps into our lives is a result of deteriorating trust. Why that trust is breaking down is basically that people whether the rank-and-file or powers-that-be ARE GREEDY.

Not only that, but the happy companies that hire those last six unemployed people – – – and the companies looking for the remaining 1.8 million that don’t exist? Like, hey, how do you fill 10 million jobs with 8.2 million people?

Three years ago, as the United States swept into Iraq, I wrote a book titled “Colossus,” which offered a somber prediction, summed up in its subtitle, “The Rise and Fall of the American Empire.” My argument was that the United States was unlikely to be as successful or as enduring an imperial power as its British predecessor for three reasons: its financial deficit, its attention deficit and, perhaps most surprisingly, its manpower deficit. Rather cruelly, I compared the American empire to a “strategic couch-potato … consuming on credit, reluctant to go to the front line [and] inclined to lose interest in protracted undertakings.”

All of the big recording labels are spending bilions every year developing new products and it is really sad that DRM is the best they come up with. In my opinion they should distribute music for
free or next to free to be able to make and split the profit of concerts, merchandise, ringtones, movies etc with artists.

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